Critical Mass (21 page)

She went along the worn runner that Daddy had put down in this hall when she’d been ten. It was a lovely Kerman, only now, twenty years on, looking as if it had just discovered it was being trod upon. She jabbed her combination in the lock and went back into her own office, still with the angels on the walls from when it was their childhood playroom, the angels that Rashid was planning to have removed in favor of a geometric pattern.

The bells outside made the familiar space seem desperately silent, and she turned the radio on. “God will not allow these evil monsters to destroy America! I tell you, crowd the churches, jam them, let this monster know what we’re made of! Don’t tread on me, you Islamofascist bastards!
Don’t tread on me!
”

As she listened, she came to realize that this shrieking voice was old Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing talk-show host. For a moment, she was transfixed by the fear in his desperate howl. Then she twisted the dial to the local National Public Radio station and, in the excessive calm of the voice there, heard a different version of the same terror: “Authorities worldwide are canvassing for more bombs, and federal officials now admit what has been an open secret for some time, that in January of 2006 nuclear materials were located in Las Vegas and destroyed. Why the public was not informed at that time will be the subject of a question to be posed to Homeland Security Chief Random Wilkes.”

Random Wilkes, another empty suit, as far as she could tell. The expansion of the director level in the intelligence community had done nothing but increase the amount of bureaucracy. Information had to get through so many levels nowadays, it was a miracle that the president ever found anything out. Had the old system still been in place, she had no doubt that he would have seen the threat in the first website. Probably it would have made no difference. But what if it had?

She tuned to the all-news station, where she learned that violence against Muslims was worsening throughout the United States, that Muslims were rioting in Paris, and that the Russian air force was bombing Chechnya.

So far, nothing about U.S. retaliation. Over the course of her career, she’d heard whispers that that there was a scorched-earth scenario available
to the United States that involved the destruction of half the population of the Muslim world. It was a hateful, horrible notion, and when Rashid had first thrown it in her face she had agreed with him that it was monstrous . . . and reminded him that it was, also, a rumor.

She hoped that, if it was real, using it would indeed save the West. She had serious doubts, though. Where would the leaders of a program like this be? Not in Karachi or Riyadh, certainly. Far more likely their headquarters would be in some out-of-the-way location too sparsely populated for a program like that to cover, or, more likely, in some middle-level Western city like Barcelona or Columbus that would not be on the nuclear list.

Feeling a congealing, twisted hatred for her own kind—for herself—she forced herself to concentrate on her work. She should never have left this desk, let alone gone off-line. But regs required her to shut down when she left the office.

The ceiling seemed to be getting lower. When the bomb went off, the ceiling would slam into her, she thought, crush her before she could perceive a thing. One instant, she would be this richly alive human being. The next, nothing.

She gave her thumbprint to her laptop, then input her latest password sequence. Her personal seal appeared, confirming that she was back on the secure network. How secure, though, given what Jimmy had said?

The CIA’s networks were supposedly secure, but not if there were spies inside the system. Because of her particularly sensitive work, she’d be a very specific target. They would be watching her right now. So here she was, forced to trust something that she did not trust. She opened the small program that told her if anybody was on this node with her. The space remained white, so she continued on, opening her browser and lining up her ’bots.

They were finding hundreds of new sites. Of course, every lunatic on the Internet had something to say, every terrorist group something to claim. Stupid people. Worthless.

She knew she shouldn’t do it, but she found herself navigating to craigslist. What was Rashid really doing, anyway, worrying about such a thing as a time like this, to the point of violating orders?

She went to the D.C. section, then to collectibles. She searched on “rug,” and there it was, the only one. She opened the page. Stared, confused. How could you sell anything with this sparse offering? There was no picture. There
were only four words of description: “Antique Sarouk carpet, purple.” Not even the size. And yet he said he had a bite? Impossible, he was a complete idiot.

She knew that she shouldn’t use her skills for this, but nevertheless she hacked into their civilian Internet service provider, Washington Cable, and was soon looking at the server space allocated to Rashid’s account. She opened his e-mail.

Nothing there except spam, some from as long as six days ago. So if he had read his e-mail as he said he had done last night, why was his spam still on the server? It would have been downloaded with the rest of the e-mail.

She looked in the record of items he had recently sent. There was an e-mail there, its subject heading “Sarouk Carpet.” She opened it. There was only one word in the body of the text: “Purple.”

Odd and odder. She saw the address of the recipient, a Gmail account. If she wanted to go any further, she would need to contact Google Security. It wasn’t difficult. Her program automatically secured the legal permissions necessary.

She wouldn’t be alone, though. Every keystroke would be recorded, and Legal might have questions later. If she couldn’t answer them, she’d end up under investigation.

She couldn’t honestly check the box that said it was a national security matter, not quite. It was just—well, it was odd, that was all.

But this was Rashid, her brother, perhaps too intense about his religion, but certainly a patriot! She was going paranoid. Because this was an insane thing to do, an abuse of power, probably a criminal act.

Instead of checking the box, she did something that was far less illegal, and replied to the buyer as Rashid. She could see that the buyer wasn’t in his e-mail account—probably still in his car, in fact—so she spoofed him: “This is Rashid. I am sorry, I have decided not to sell my rug. The offer is withdrawn.” She hit send—and immediately the message returned. She checked the network, the servers. The backbone was intact. The route was clear. The problem was quite simple: the address no longer existed in Gmail.

In other words, the recipient had closed the account as soon as Rashid had sent his strange, single-word e-mail.

She sat, staring at her screen, thinking. Her heart was blasting; sweat was running along her underarms.

Now she returned to Google’s security sign-in area. She certainly had justifiable suspicion this time. “Rashid,” she whispered, her voice miserable.

She checked the boxes, checked that this was a national security matter, and that she had probable cause.

From behind a veil of tears, she sent her request to Google. Sometimes there was a delay. They had their legal issues, too, their oversight protocols. But not today. Today, the reply came back in just seconds. The Gmail account had been opened this morning from a T-Mobile HotSpot in Alexandria. It had been open for just six minutes. Of course, the account’s information still remained, but all it did was direct her to that particular Starbucks. She noted the address, though, because she knew now that this was important. Her heart was breaking, but her mind was clear.

“Purple” was a coded message, and therefore her brother was involved in something. What if it had to do with the nuclear attack? Oh, but God, no, that was impossible. Rashid might be tangled up in some silly extremism, but not that. Or there might even be some innocent explanation—a secret society, perhaps. Wahabis in the United States were secretive, and for a member of this community to be flirting with them—he would be very careful.

Still, he had violated the most important order he had probably ever received in order to transmit a code word on a morning when he should have been racing to his dispersal point.

She threw her head back; she clenched her jaw; the tears rushed from her eyes; her nails dug into her palms. Then she drew breath, and a choked cry came out of her, instantly silenced.

Again, she heaved, fighting herself, clapping her hands over her own mouth. She forced herself to stop shaking, to swallow the next scream.

Their father would weep with rage to know that the effort he’d made to get his kids around the prohibition against Muslims in intelligence work had led to this: “Senator, you know Rashid and Nabila from their babyhoods! You know what kind of kids they are!”

She told herself that it wasn’t just them, not just the Muslims. After all, had divisions between families like this not happened here before, in the Civil War? But this was her brother’s betrayal of her and of their country, not the betrayal of some other brother from long ago.

Jim had warned of a penetration and a serious security problem. She had
known at once that her work would be of intense interest to anybody wanting to follow the CIA’s efforts to contain this problem. She was an important link in that chain.

So they were almost certainly watching her online activities. Of course they were. But this also meant that they had seen what she had just discovered about her brother.

They would have to act, and at once.

She picked up her cell phone—and then turned it off. She took the battery out and laid it on her desk. She closed her laptop, unplugged it, then removed the battery. She dropped the computer and the battery into her backpack.

How long might she have? Not long. They might be on station somewhere in the neighborhood. Probably were.

Rashid had left her here not to die but to be killed.

She left her office. She knew she had no time to waste, but the weight of the lost past, as she went through the house, slowed her movements. Leaving here was pushing against the strength of a river that was made up of the pictures on the walls, the carpet that had pleased Daddy so much, the couch Mother had loved. Nabila could hear the happy voices still, her mother calling her from the kitchen, her dad—well, she had felt herself a royal child once, simply to be his daughter.

Feeling now like a refugee from some sort of hurricane, she bowed her head and left the house. Rather than taking her car, she walked down to the coffee shop on the corner. She had no intention of using the WiFi node there—or of using the computer again, not until it had been completely examined by digital security, in the unlikely event that she managed to reach Langley.

She walked past the silent houses and the houses where people were leaving, filling their cars, calling to their children, throwing their luggage in, their clothes in piles. An SUV raced away, followed by a dog running hard. The vehicle rounded a corner, the dog still behind it, his big ears flapping as he ran with all his might.

She found the old pay phone in the cul-de-sac beside the coffee bar and dug into her purse, praying that she had change.

She put in two quarters. Dialed. She scrambled for more money. Paid more. And heard ringing. Again. Again. “Please, Jim, oh,
please
!”

“Please leave a message.” His voice, at least.

“Jim, it’s Nabby. I think Rashid is in it! Oh, God, Jim, help me! There is a word, I think a signal. ‘Purple.’ That is, the word ‘purple.’ Jim, where are you? Am I talking to a dead man?”

Unwilling to hold the line open longer, Nabila hung up and walked quickly away. She wasn’t sure where to go. The Metro? That might help. Take a few stops, then phone Marge, see if she could be picked up.

But how could she know that whoever showed up could be trusted? She could not know.

She turned a corner, and saw coming this way a car that was too careful to be anything but a spotter. She stepped back into an alley. The car went past.

Her heart hammered. The car was looking for her and therefore the car was proof. Somebody had indeed been watching her every online move, and had seen her make her discovery about the carpet sale.

She watched the car stop at the far end of the alley. There was no time now; whoever was surrounding her would have her in their gun sights in minutes.

They were probably a detail from some agency or other that had been ordered to bring her in or kill her or whatever. They themselves wouldn’t even know why—or, ultimately, where—the order had originated.

She went down the alley and into the tangle of bushes behind a row of houses, and used the crackling shrubs for what cover they offered.

Then she saw a man watching her from the tall back window of one of the houses. He wore a T-shirt and had a rifle ported across his chest. She had never felt so acutely aware of her black hair and enormous brown eyes. All she lacked to make her identity certain was a burka. He stared with the steadiness of a practiced hunter. She smiled at him and went on along the alley. Ahead was 9th Street, and just down the block Eastern Market and its Metro stop. But was the Metro still running?

Just as she exited the alley, another suspicious vehicle, this one a white Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows, came around the corner and passed her going north on 9th Street. She tried to duck back, but it stopped. It sat, motionless, engine running. Coming through the alley from the other direction were two men, moving fast. They had pistols in their hands.

She looked again toward the man in the house. Was he a civilian, or another pursuer? No way to know, and no way to know if he would help her or hand her over.

She opened the gate to his back garden and went in. Motionless, he watched her come. Behind her, the men moved more quickly. She reached the house. He opened the door.

“I need your help.”

He drew her in.

YOU HAVE NEVER MATTERED

Alexei offered Vladimir a Sobrainie. Vladimir looked hungrily at the black tube.
“Not smoking,” he said. “It is your last lung,” Dr. Abramov had told him. “Respect it.”